Weeknight Meal Tip: Quicker Meal Prep with Storage Containers

Eager to get right to the cooking, we're always looking for ways to get our prep work done more quickly and efficiently.

Much of prep work is about being organized--things like having bowls for everything, combining ingredients that will be cooked at the same time, and prepping veggies before meat to avoid washing our board.

Now we've added one more trick: using glass and plastic storage containers as both prep bowls and measuring scoops!

A while back, we put two and two together and realized that we could use these storage containers to measure chopped ingredients for our prep work.

Now instead of using a measuring cup when recipes call for things like "1 cup chopped onions" or "4 cups shredded chard," we dump the prepped ingredients directly into one of our containers and stop when it's full.

Not only is this neater and more efficient, but we also nix the need to dirty another kitchen utensil!

Emma is the recipe editor for The Kitchn and a graduate of the Cambridge School for Culinary Arts. She is the author of True Brews and Brew Better Beer (Spring 2015). Check out her personal blog for more cooking stories.